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Meta

Month: July 2014

Once in a while I’ve seen this tag in the HTML source of older websites, I too had implemented it at one time, but forgot the reason. Here’s what I’ve turned up, and as such have removed it universally.

This tag was at one time used by one small search engine in Vancouver Canada, it was never picked up by the larger search organizations and as such has very little relevance.

OpenSearch is a relatively obscure topic that I’ve only crossed a few times, here is the premise.

A simple tag can be added to your content, in this case HTML, but a feed can also contain this element.
<link rel="search" href="http://www.giantgeek.com/opensearchdescription.xml" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="giantgeek.com" />

That link refers to a file that resembles the one below, in it you can specify the URL to the search facilities on a website, or as in the case below, use the parameters for a Google search of your website.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE OpenSearchDescription>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>GiantGeek.com</ShortName>
<Description>Use Google to search our web site.</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Tags>giantgeek skotfred</Tags>
<Contact>[email protected]</Contact>
<Image width="16" height="16" type="image/x-icon">http://www.giantgeek.com/favicon.ico</Image>
<!-- NOTE: this uses Google, you can give your own search url instead -->
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.com/search?q=site:giantgeek.com {searchTerms}"/>
<Url type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" rel="self" template="http://www.giantgeek.com/opensearchdescription.xml"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>

Many modern browsers that provide a ‘search box’ in the browser interface, can then add the capability to perform a search of your website even when the user is not there already.

If you have made an investment in creating a device specific application in addition to a traditional web application, there is also a good chance that you want to drive your users (customers) to use the native application.

With the release of Apple IOS 6 in September 2012, this ability was made possible with the use of a simple HTML <meta> tag on your web page. You will need to replace the x’s with your app-id from the Apple Store.